Disappointment and Responsibility (was Re: Requiescat in Pace: Unforgivables)

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 174971

Pippin:
> As to the other Slytherins...
> 
> Voldemort claims that the Slytherins who left the school joined him.
> 
> But he is a notorious liar.
> 
> In fact, we don't see *any* of the Slytherin students doing his
> bidding Draco is acting quite on his own.
<snipping>

Jen: Draco is acting on his own and his actions are suspect.  How 
many times did he exhort the other two not to kill Harry in the Room 
of Requirement?  Draco sounded remarkably like Snape in HBP, telling 
them not to kill Harry because the Dark Lord wanted him alive.  Then 
he doesn't allow Crabbe to try to hurt Ron/Hermione, claiming 
something might happen to the diadem.  No spells were cast my him 
before he lost his wand.  He's not acting like a man on a mission, or 
at least not the mission Crabbe claims for him!  Draco seems more 
like a guy trying to keep the other two from hurting the Trio and 
damaging the diadem.

To top it off, he apparently dragged an unconcious Goyle as high as 
he could take him in the burning room instead of attempting to find a 
way out by himself - practically a saving people thing <g>.

Finally, Harry doesn't treat Draco like a man who wanted to sell him 
out to Voldemort when he sees him in the Great Hall...I realize 
absence of interaction isn't proof but it was enough for me to 
know that things had changed for Draco and between Harry/Draco, 
something confirmed at the train station 19 years later.  

Magpie:
> JKR once misquoted this line in an interview as DD saying 
> choices "make you" who you are, and that surprised me because 
> they're not the same thing. In canon it's consistently the former--
> choices show who you are, because there's not a lot of change. 

Jen: In GOF DD says 'it's not what someone is born, but what they 
grow to be.'  

I don't agree with the intepretation of his COS statement as a 
Calvinist thought.  Choice isn't an inborn trait and abilities have 
at least *some* component of genetic predisposition.  So if 
Dumbledore's saying choice is more important to show what a person 
truly is than abilites, he's making a statement consistent with the 
one in GOF (when he said choice was more important than blood).  

Jen